Casanova LLC

Episode 3

“T here is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”

― Giacomo Casanova

Alessandro

What. The actual fuck. Was he doing?

“Jacopo!” Claire chirped. “How nice to see you again.”

“And so soon.”There were nails in my voice.

Not only was Claire unbothered by his intrusion, she went out of her way to be welcoming. “I’m so glad you’re here. I have a question about the frescoes on the ceiling.”

Why didn’t she ask me?

“Of course, Bella. How may I offer my services?”

She beamed at him.

Because she didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be here.

She didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be setting the charcuterie platter on the table.

She didn’t know he had no business placing the wine in the rimmed pewter coaster.

She didn’t know that he was here to fuck up my night.

“Is it a canvas or was it painted directly on to the ceiling?”

He held back the answer like a cheap cliffhanger as he dashed a small amount of wine into a glass and tasted it— tasted it. “Ahhh,” he sighed, “a bottle as superb as its company.”

She didn’t know his bullshit.

“That was your line, nipote.” He snapped his fingers. “Pick up your cues, eh?” And then he had the audacity to smile. At me .

I smiled back. At him . “Please, join me in the kitchen. I have some questions for you, too.”

He threw both hands out to his sides. “So many questions! But first, Bella’s.” As he poured three glasses—three — he regaled her with the story of how he painstakingly carved the canvas out of the ceiling so it could be restored. But if that wasn’t difficult enough, oh, how he struggled to put it back in. He wished he’d had my help, but of course, I was too busy taking care of the women—how that exhausted me so—and at that point the ceiling plaster had deteriorated.

When he moved to sit down, I snapped, “Zio? Cucina?”

He looked at me as if I’d just arrived. “You worry for the sauce? é perfetto.”

“Not the sauce, the bread.” I would have set fire to the kitchen to get him in there.

“Out of the oven and in the warmer. Come, join us.”

Inviting me to join them .

I reluctantly went to the table. I moved to pull out Claire’s chair, but Jacopo slipped between us. “Please, you must sit. So far you have traveled.” Claire obliged, all smiles, and Jacopo handed her a glass of wine. “My nephew, he is too busy with bread and sauces to remember the most delicious dish is already at the table.”

I snorted.

Claire grinned slyly at me. “I see where you get it from.”

“I joke, I joke!” They both laughed while I tried to come up with a strategy. Jacopo smiled up at me. “Are you sitting or serving tonight?”

Admitting temporary defeat, I sat and grabbed the remaining glass of wine, bringing it to my mouth for a significant slug. But Jacopo grabbed my wrist mid-gulp. “Why you drink so fast, eh? We must first toast our guest.” He made a can you believe this fuckin guy face at Claire, who giggled.

Son. Of a bitch.

We raised our glasses and tapped them together.

“Salute,” we said.

I beat him to the fork and dished some salami and cheese onto Claire’s plate as I asked my beloved fucking uncle, “Are you hungry?”

“I am here, am I not?”

“It’s just that by this time of night, you’ve usually already eaten.” I caught Claire’s eye. “The man loves an Early Bird special.”

He chortled. “Oh ho ho, Young Bull. Today, I save my appetite.” He gestured at Claire. “For you.” He gazed at me. “And you.”

I left the fork on the board, refusing to serve him. “Well, then, eat up. There’s not enough of the main to share.”

His expression went mock-wounded. “But you know Number Three is my favorite.”

Claire’s head quirked. “Number Three?”

Jacopo leaned in, conspiratorial. “We learn to make but four dinners. No need for more, you see. Four nights, four meals, just in case they want to eat-in the whole visit. This one likes to start with three, because the dessert does most of the seducing for him.”

I leaned in, too. “That might have been true in my dear uncle’s day, but I’ve actually learned how to cook.”

He laughed. “Like you learned to play the guitar? Ask him to play for you. If he knows more than one song, I give to him my boat.”

I laughed, too. “No, don’t do that. How, then, will you leave?”

Claire’s eyes darted between us, not sure how serious we were. “What’s in Number Three?”

I sat back, letting Jacopo serve himself. “It’s not called Number Three. This isn’t a drive-thru.” I cleared my throat, relaxing the tension that had crept into my voice. “There were scallops today at the Rialto, so I made a fresh pasta with taleggio and truffle to complement them. And a torta tenerina for dessert.”

She threw her head back in theatrical ecstasy. “I love chocolate.” She slid a teasing look Jacopo’s way. “I see what you mean about the seduction.”

Mouth too full to talk, he could only gesture largely: What I tell you? He swallowed. “We must make you believe we are the most incredible men to ever live.”

“Are you not?”

“For three days, Bella.” He held up his fingers and ticked off: “Four dinners, one song, three days.”

So that’s what this was about. He was doing everything possible to undermine me. To puncture the fantasy. But, why? Why did he think I couldn’t handle this?

I stood. “It’s so kind of you to try to stay awake for us but let me make a plate to take with you. I’m sure Claire’s willing to share.”

“Absolutely!”

He reached across the table, patted her hand. “Grazie. It really is my favorite.”

I strode toward the kitchen. “Jacopo.” I flung open the swinging door, jerked my head inside. “Proprio adesso, per favore.”

Claire put her hand over his and squeezed. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

Well, shit.

“No, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Please? I have so many more questions.”

Ask me! Ask me!

“Well.” He put his other hand on his chest. “If I am not intruding. It would be un piacere. A pleasure.” Then he lifted her empty water glass. “He gave you no water! Still or sparkling, my dear?”

“Still, please.”

He held it aloft, vaguely in my direction. “Sandro? When you come back in, yeah?”

This was actually happening.

Later, he would be dead.

But for now, he was a living pain in my ass.

* * *

For the next half hour, he dynamited the fantasy. For every question she had about something in the house, he had a story about the indignities of living in a relic with retrofitted plumbing and electricity. For every query about renovation, he made it clear how we were just paupers in our own home, living off the largess of rich women— so many women—servants to the burden of this legacy that had been foisted upon us.

Claire didn’t seem put off by this narrative. But then, she knew something, didn’t she, about living at the mercy of wealth. She appeared to take everything he said at face value, with none of the revulsion I knew he was hoping for.

When he took the liberty of retrieving a second bottle of wine from the rack behind him, I excused myself to prepare the mains. I was loath to leave her alone with him, but someone had to blanch the pasta and sear the scallops and it sure as shit wasn’t going to be him.

I returned with three plates in hand to see him refilling Claire’s glass while she shook her gorgeous head. “Yes, but what a history. Remarkable.”

I silently set their dinners before them.

I was a waiter.

“And during the two wars,” he began, “we opened her to anyone who needed shelter. But always, it was la residenza di Casanova. Ca’ Casanova . Even when there was fighting over who would next be chosen—there was a duel once!—no one ever lost sight of our purpose. The original Casanova, Giacomo, he is known as a lothario, yes? How many thousands of lovers. But anyone who has read his words, his autobiography, would know that he loved each and every woman. They were not, how you Americans say, notches on una cintura, they were given the full experience of love. But for them, only for them. My father”—here, he crossed himself—“he say to me, he say, ‘Jaco, it is how we do, we make the sacrifice. We give the love, but never do we take it.’ However?—”

“Claire?” I had to break this up. Or at least try to. “You might want to try the scallops before they get cold.”

“Oh, sorry, of course.”

“Sandro!” my uncle barked. “Per favore. Lei non é una bambina.”

“I know she’s not a child, but?—”

“Surely she is capable to talk and eat.”

“I would love for her to talk and eat,” I gritted, “but you are making her listen . And not eat. ”

“And she’s loving every minute of it. Having actual conversation with people other than lawyers? It’s as restorative as anything else. Possibly more.”

I was chastened into silence.

“You see, Young Bull? You must learn to, as they say, read the room.”

My jaw clenched so hard it popped.

Claire cut into a scallop and brought half to her mouth. She closed her eyes as she tasted it. And sighed the most sensual moan. The sound pierced me, splintered me. I was struggling to manage my idiot uncle, Claire’s expectations, and my attraction to her at the same time. It was Olympic-level multitasking. She sighed, wistfully. “Food hasn’t tasted this good in a year. You’re bringing me back to life. Grazie.” She twirled pasta onto her fork and lifted it, pausing at her mouth. She gave us a wholesome, grounding, real smile. “Grazie mille. Both of you.”

I stole a glance at Jacopo, also rendered mute by her genuine gratitude in the face of our sparring.

But not for long. “Prego, Bella. Prego.”

As we all dug into the food, the two of us enjoying Claire’s enjoyment, Jacopo seemed to relax, as if he had accomplished something.

Which might have made me nervous, but I found myself oddly at ease instead. No, not at ease; content. There was something familiar about this configuration. Something comfortingly domestic. I realized it hadn’t happened since my mother was here, or at least since Liv got married, and the sudden rush of possible implications that ushered in was too much for me to begin to process tonight.

At one point the conversation turned to the old courtesan culture. How Venice had, at one time, been known the world over for its professional class of whores. How, during the Renaissance, Venice’s courtesans were respected and highly regarded. They were educated, literate, musically skilled, published writers. They were political counselors to their patrons. They were more mobile and independent than many men and more worldly than any other women on the planet.

Eventually, the talk turned to the Casanova empire itself. Claire prepared her last bite of pasta on her fork. “But how did the actual…” I could sense her hunting for the word. “…business start?”

I held up a finger. “It’s not a business.”

Jacopo groaned. “My American nephew. Always convinced the polizia are listening in.”

“My Italian uncle, always convinced they can be bribed away.”

He gave a shrug: but it’s true.

I grabbed hold of the conversation. “Long before Giacomo Casanova lived, the church had managed to end the reign of the Venetian courtesan. But the skill of traditional lovemaking remained. An understanding that ‘sex work’ was not just about knowing the mechanics of love. It was about the art.”

Jacopo could not let any opportunity to undermine the legacy pass. “And then a nephew of Giacomo seemed to understand what we today would call ‘branding,’ took the name, and began trading on it.”

“And women just started coming?”

Low-hanging fruit: “In a manner of speaking.”

Jacopo, having had enough wine by this point, laughed. “Mostly local women to start. Wealthy Austrian and French wives with distracted husbands. Wealthy soon-to-be-brides with, how you say, jitters. Widows, of course.” He gestured to Claire and I flinched. She, however, did not.

“A generation later, came the Brits. Then the Russians. Prussians. Then in the twentieth century, the Americans, Persians, Japanese. And Chinese. And Indian. All the oil nations. No country was?—”

“Reality TV personalities.” Jacopo was staring off into space. “Pop stars.”

“Not countries there, Old Bull.”

“Are you sure?”

He had a point. Celebrity was an identity unto itself. So was wealth, frankly. Especially nowadays. All of the diverse cultures my grandfather used to talk about having to navigate had become homogenized into one unifying culture, regardless of country of origin: the privilege of wealth and access.

Claire took a sip of wine before asking Jacopo, “You took over for your father?” He nodded. “When?”

“The 23rd of May, 1990.”

I whipped my head toward him as Claire laughed. “How do you remember that?”

He lifted a shoulder and speared a scallop. “It was the day Milan won the European Cup. They make only one goal. In the sixty-eighth minute. I remember…” He glanced at Claire. “You’ll forgive me, but I was on the altano, the roof deck, my head between my first guest’s legs, when, from all around, I hear shouts of victory, whistles, clapping. For a moment, I thought this was for me!” He laughed. “I joke, I joke.”

Claire’s and my gaze collided in mirth. It felt intimate, like we were visiting my family and she already had a humorous understanding of my kooky uncle. It was so normal . But then she said, “And what about you?”

My mirth froze. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s uh. It’s been five years. Seven. Sorry. Seven years.”

“And was your first time as…noteworthy as his?”

I took a moment to assess her. Her eyes were slightly glassy, but it could have been from the wine. Her cheeks were deliciously pink. Her chest flushed. Charred blush, had she called it?

I got up and cracked one of the French doors. Jacopo stage-whispered, “There was no cheering, I can tell you that.”

On my way back around her chair, I found myself dropping a hand to her shoulder. Gave a light squeeze. Before I pulled away, she reached up and captured it in hers. Squeezed back. So I lifted it to my mouth and, eyes on Jacopo across the table, gently kissed it. The look I gave him was dissociated from the kiss. It was Casanova to Casanova. It was meant to say, I’m working here. Back off.

I sat down again. “I don’t kiss and tell.” I jerked my head toward my uncle. “His stories are old enough to be mythology. Mine? Not so much.”

“Fair enough.” She picked a piece of cheese off the forgotten charcuterie board. “So when did you—I’m assuming there’s some training process.”

Before I could answer, Jacopo hooted. “What training process? You think he knows what the hell he is doing? You’ll find out tomorrow just what he does not know.”

I slid his empty plate toward me.

“What are you?—”

“Claire’s jet-lagged.”

He waved a hand. “She’ll nap tomorrow, while you’re seducing her.”

“I think it’s time we wrapped this up?—”

“Noooo!” they whined in unison.

“I’m fine!” Claire insisted. “Besides, we haven’t had dessert yet.”

“Sì, Sandro, we haven’t had dessert yet.”

It was the raised eyebrow on his smug face that made me want to do a murder.

He had already turned his attention back to a rapt Claire. “He and his sister spent summers in Venezia to give his poor mother in New York a break. But he stayed with my mother around the corner, not here.”

“The palazzo wasn’t exactly an appropriate environment for children,” I put in.

“But you saw enough. For a while he thought… Remember you would say, ‘So many girlfriends, Zio!’”

I stood and began collecting the plates. I needed something to do.

“Have you got a train to catch?”

“I’m just preparing for dessert.” If there were a train to catch, he’d be on it.

“One day, he asked how I make my money. Because he never saw me work. So I told him.” I could feel him looking at me, studying the side of my face as I stacked porcelain and cutlery. “How the men in our family, this is what they did. You were, cosa, ten? Eleven?” I nodded. He turned back to Claire. “You see, I was the first generation where there was not a choice of men. It was only me. The older brothers of my father had been killed in the war. My own brother, he was omosesssuale, gay.” He crossed himself again, but this time added a soft kiss to his fingertips. “And then, like me, there was only Alessandro. We became very close, like father and son. Even better. So we understand each other. Very well.” He gave me a short but pointed look.

I felt Claire’s eyes on me. “So you had to do this?”

I began to shake my head, but Jacopo answered for me. “You’ll forgive me, but to say he, or we, ‘had to’ is not quite correct. Better to ask if we choose this life or did circumstances make the choice for us?”

I picked up the plates and carried them into the kitchen. The question was one that I had wrestled with over the years and, to this day, had not been able to answer. At least honestly. It was best I leave the conversation for the moment.

But then I heard Claire ask, “How old was he when you began his…his education?”

“When the balls, they drop, the school, she opens.”

And I grabbed the bottle of wine and hurried back out. “More wine?”

Jacopo grinned and pushed my shoulder as I sat again. “I joke, I joke.” He turned back to Claire. “When he was a teenager, he said he wanted to do it. But of course he wanted to do it. When you are a teenager, anything that will get you laid sounds like a good idea.”

I groaned yet again.

“So I say, okay, I train you. I will train you and then we will see. He of course thought that the training would involve touching of women, but you do not touch for at least five years.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “Really.”

“Assolutamente. I have a friend, he is a barber. He is known for—” He looked to me and asked for the English translation.

“Hot shave.”

“Sì. Hot shave. You know”—he mimed it—“with lather and a straight razor. His grandfather, he was Syrian, he trained him on a balloon. He could not shave a man until he had shaved balloons for two years without them popping. He pop one, the two years, they start over. And women…women are more delicate than balloons. First, you must learn them here.” He touched his temple. “And then here.” He touched his chest. “Before you can learn them there.” He gestured to his lap.

Claire grinned. “But he stuck it out.”

“He did. After he went to art school, he came to me and said, yes. I want to do this. I am ready.” Jacopo leveled a sober look at me. “And now he respects, and honors, and holds sacred the traditions that have been passed on to him.”

“And when it was time to… I mean presumably,” she spoke mincingly, “there was a…” She swung a hand between us. “Passing of the baton.”

“Oh, yes! But sadly, his baton?—”

“Here we go,” I mumbled.

“It is not exactly the stuff of Casanova legend.” Looking regretful, he held up his thumb and forefinger, an inch apart.

Claire burst out laughing.

“I joke, I joke!”

I stood, mustering the fakest laugh I could. “I joke, you joke, we all joke!”

Claire just laughed harder.

Dessert was to be served now . I went into the kitchen, hastily uncovered the small torta I had prepared, and brought it and a knife—for the cake, not him, sadly—back into the dining room just in time to hear him say:

“Yes, it is stupid, Bella, but it is a fact of our life. Wealthy women, they like everything big.”

“Stop generalizing about wealthy women.” My tone was light, but serious, and I nodded at Claire. “It’s insulting.”

She raised a brow. “But I am not a wealthy woman. I was the wife of a wealthy man.”

He waved off my censure and her correction. “Old Money is different.”

“Old Money? What makes you think?—”

“Please,” he pshawed. “You are mannered. So elegant. Poised.” I set the torta on the table and Claire bent over it, inhaling. “And your father, he was in antiquities, no? Some English lord, as well?”

So Jacopo had Googled her, too. And he’d obviously found the same article I had when I’d Googled her years ago.

Claire’s mirthful eyes met mine as I sliced the cake. “You think I’m ‘Old Money,’ too?”

I grinned. “Principessa, for sure.”

She lifted her wine coyly to her lips, enjoying this. “Enlighten me?”

I dished up the cake. “I grew up watching girls like you. I’d see you at the Met, on your little field trips, in your little uniforms, giggling in front of a Roman statue. I was there, sketching. You had one bold friend who would approach first, ask me what I was drawing. And then she’d point at you and say, ‘Can you draw her? Her parents would pay a lot of money for it.’ But then one of your countless chaperones would appear and whisk you back to…” I set a plate down in front of her, both of us fully smiling now. “Greenwich?” I propped a hand on the table and leaned over. “To Something-Something-Obscure-Historical-Figure Day School?” I lifted her hand. Kissed her knuckles. Murmured against her skin, “Tell me: what was your pony’s name?”

Mock-offended, she yanked her hand away. She picked up her fork and studied her plate, taking a moment to assemble a reply. “There was a title of some kind. And some Old Money. Somewhere back. But it was all long gone by the time my parents met.” She looked at Jacopo. “The reporter of that article you clearly found had tracked down my mother, cold-called her, caught her off guard. I’d just gotten engaged to Richard and she didn’t know what he knew about our past, so she told her what my father would have said about himself. What he did say about himself. Before he disappeared. A Baron. Antiquities.”

She forked a piece of cake and held it up, but didn’t take a bite. “But it was all a lie. The something-something-obscure-historical-figure day schools I went to, I went to on scholarship. And I only attended them long enough for my father to con the rich kids’ parents.” She looked at me. “And the only horses I ever knew the names of were the ones my father bet on.”

Then she ate the cake and her eyes rolled back in her head. She thumped the table and extended her arm, dropping her head down onto it and looking up at me with baleful eyes. “Bury me in this torta.”

I was still too busy processing all of what she’d said to laugh. Unbothered, she raised her head and took another forkful.

I began gently. “Did he ever…”

“No, never came back. Left when I was fourteen.”

“Dead?”

“If he were alive, he would have crawled out of the woodwork the moment I married Richard Craven.”

There was only a splash of wine left in the bottle and I poured it into her glass. She took a sip after the bite of chocolate and closed her eyes. And moaned again. “This combination is…incandescent.”

She was incandescent. The combination of her was… I’d never been so completely wrong before. “What happened then?” I’d forgotten about seduction, about teasing, even about Jacopo.

She went back to the cake, shrugged again. “We moved to Delaware. Stayed with my aunt for a bit. Mom got a steady retail job and I was able to start high school and stay there until I graduated. Pretty normal from that point on.” She scoffed. “Not counting the last five years. Well, actually, the last year. Specifically.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. She seemed to make a decision. To leave it there. To finish her dessert. To sit back. To drum her fingers lightly on the tabletop. “No family is perfect. But I think you can overcome anything if there’s love. I have that with my mom. I had that with Richard. Despite what came after, the one thing I know is true, that I carry with me, is that he loved me.” She dragged a finger through the chocolate on the plate, brought it to her mouth, and licked it clean. “And that’s what you two have.”

Jacopo had gone quiet. I glanced at him and he was simply watching her. All his performance gone. He had returned to himself.

In fact, he stood. “I think, unfortunately, it is time I depart.”

Claire sat up straight. “Oh. But you haven’t had any cake.”

“I fear I would be taking it from your mouth.” He grinned, nodding at her finger-streaked plate. “I can have it whenever I desire.” His manner had changed. He was done interfering. He’d lost his way when he’d realized he was wrong about her. I knew this because I felt exactly the same.

She stood. “I’m so glad you joined us.”

“Grazie, Bella. Me too.”

“It was an honor to sit with you in this beautiful house that you’ve cared so much for.” She extended her hand over the table.

“The honor is mine.” He said it haltingly. Then he shook her hand, bowed slightly, and moved to the kitchen.

“Here, let me get the door.” I held it open, trying to summon up everything I’d wanted to say to him for the last hour, but, oddly, interestingly, my anger had vaporized. He stepped past me, then turned back, as if we had something to exchange. But then his eyes caught on something beyond my shoulder. They went wistful. I followed his stare.

She’d placed one delicate hand on the table, bent her nose to the vase of fresh flowers in the center. Her face glowed with a wash of candlelight and pleasure. When I turned back to my uncle, it was obvious that the fight had gone out of us. He told me, in Italian, “I said you are doomed. I was wrong. You are fucked.”

And he left.

I took a breath and reentered the dining room. I cleared my throat. “Would you like more torta?”

“Better not.” She brought a hand to her stomach. “I ate more tonight than I have in a year.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“It is.” She fidgeted, her fingers picking at themselves in front of her skirt. “He’s delightful.”

“He can be.”

She walked over to the fireplace full of candles, and looked up at the eighteenth-century landscape above it. “There’s so much beauty in this house. But it’s all from the past. Why aren’t any of your paintings here?”

Because she had all of them. But she didn’t know that. And I didn’t know how to tell her that without explaining why.

Besides, I was too distracted to answer.

The candles in the fireplace illuminated around Claire like a solar eclipse. When she shifted and opened her legs, the light passed between her thighs, outlining them all the way up to where they joined. And one thing was certain. There was no mistaking this.

She was naked underneath.

When I failed to answer her, she turned around and looked at me. Then she moved to come back to the table.

“Wait.” I lifted a hand, and she halted. “Would you stay right where you are, just as you are, for a little longer?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not wearing any panties.”

Her face went slack and she closed her stance, glancing behind her at the traitorous candles. “What makes you think that?”

I came off the doorjamb but didn’t move forward. “Prove me wrong.”

“How?”

“You know how.”

On cue, a breeze blew in from the open door and rustled the material around her legs. She studied my face, trying to decide if I was serious. I just kept looking at her. Steadily, unrelenting.

Finally, her chin lifted and her eyes took on a daring cant and her hands went to the sides of her skirt. She reopened her legs and slowly elevated her hemline. When she reached the very top of her thighs, she stopped. Stayed right where she was; no higher, no lower.

“I changed my mind.”

“About what?” I didn’t recognize my voice.

“In the bar, you said that I was looking for a reintroduction, not a reinvention.”

“Yes.”

“I want to be reinvented.”

I should be looking in her eyes, making sure she knew that I was hearing her. But my gaze could not be pulled away from that hemline. “In what way?”

“I want to go to that orgy you mentioned.”

Now my eyes lifted. Shot up, more like.

My immediate, lizard-brain response? No.

What I actually said? “Can you tell me why?”

“Because I can’t get enough of the way you look at me. I haven’t felt…” She swallowed. “Desirable. In so long.”

“How is that possible, Cara?” She was stop-and-stare gorgeous. She was climb-out-of-your-skin sexy. How did she not know that? Feel that? Not for the first time, I wondered what exactly that motherfucker had done to her.

She lifted a shoulder, and it lifted one side of her dress even higher. I forced myself to keep my eyes on her face. “Before, when I was single, I was afraid of it. Desirability came with a looming threat. When I was married, I was invisible. Now, I’m the Black Widow. People only look at me with hatred and judgment. If I’m lucky, pity. It’s intoxicating to think they could look at me with attraction.” She looked hopeful. “You said people wear masks there? Maybe no one will recognize me.”

How could I say no to this? What she said made perfect sense. It made me sad for her and something else for me I didn’t want to examine too closely. But if she wanted it…

At my silence, she seemed to withdraw again. “Maybe it’s not a good idea.” She chuckled. “I said earlier that I didn’t understand how any woman could want more than you and now?—”

“Do you want this?”

“Yes, but I don’t need it.”

“All you have to think about is what you want. Let me take care of what you need.”

The look she gave me then. Talk about feeling desirable. I had to look away. My gaze went where it was most compelled.

Just in time to see a droplet roll into view on her upper thigh, glistening with reflected light. It left a trail that led right where I wanted to be.

Perhaps feeling it, she dropped her skirt and cleared her throat, and it took everything in me not to walk over there and finger it off her thigh the way she’d fingered the chocolate off her plate. And then what?

“Why did you choose not to wear panties tonight, Claire?”

“I wanted to know how it would feel.”

“And how did it feel?”

“Good. Wild. Free. Terrifying.”

“Why terrifying?”

“Well. I didn’t know your uncle would be joining us.”

We stared at each other. Then laughed.

I wanted to feel her laugh. I wanted to touch those cheeks and absorb the heat coming from them, from her chest, and play with that spot under her jaw as I felt her throat pulse with laughter.

But that wasn’t for tonight. Especially after she yawned and said she was ready to go upstairs.

I led her through the sala, out the doors, and up the stairs. When we got to the first landing, she turned around, a step above me. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” An external promise and an internal regret.

She smiled shyly.

She went into her room.

I went upstairs to make arrangements for tomorrow night.

For the orgy.

For what Claire wanted.

Claire

I woke up to a text message from Alessandro telling me that something was waiting outside the apartment door.

I couldn’t believe I’d slept straight through the night. I’d been sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, but I’d staggered into the bathroom, washed my flushed face with hands that didn’t feel like they belonged to me, let my dress fall to the floor, and crawled into the cloud of a bed with every intention of getting up in a minute and putting on pajamas. Nine hours later...

Maybe it was jet lag, maybe it was him, but maybes aside, I’d had the soundest sleep in a year.

I threw on the plum silk robe and opened the door to find a tray sitting on a sideboard in the hall: a French press of coffee with cream, a flaky croissant, two deviled eggs, a sliced orange, and a bowl of granola with yogurt, raw honey on the side. And a rose for good measure. It looked like a still life. I carried it in, set it on the window seat, and sat cross-legged before it. I poured myself some coffee and looked out at the morning sun on the Grand Canal. The coffee was especially fragrant and the light that washed over the water was worthy of a Monet. Everything was heightened here. Including me. I felt like a different person and it was a person I wanted to be.

I texted him thank you and he responded immediately, as if he had been waiting with thumbs poised: Be ready in an hour. And good morning. I couldn’t resist replying: How ready and for what? He came right back with: We’re sightseeing this morning. (Actual sightseeing. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Followed immediately by: Panties optional. Like a teenager, I smiled all the way through breakfast, and getting dressed, and opening the door, and eagerly skipping down the steps.

He was waiting at the bottom of the staircase and that butterfly from Raines Law Room took startled flight in my stomach at the sight of him—one booted foot on the bottom stair, one hand on the stone banister, herringbone peacoat, cashmere scarf the color of his eyes, hair damp from a shower.

He greeted me with a kiss on both cheeks, hands cupping my hips. Then squeezed them. And then a smile. A smile of promise and possibility. “Do you feel all right?”

“Yes! Why?”

“You look flushed.”

I cursed my British coloring. It made me so easily readable, a walking mood ring. I looked down at our feet and whirled my hand. “Oh, that’s just—I took a really hot shower.”

“Ah. I’ve only taken cold ones since you arrived.”

He said it so simply, no Casanova smolder, no lascivious affect. And it was all the hotter for its unembellished honestly.

He spun away and led me out through the walled garden, through an intricate iron gate, and into a small alley. Which eventually led to a slightly larger one, and then a properly larger one, and then into a small piazza. The neighborhood was still morning quiet, the sound of seagulls only occasionally interrupted by doors closing and water lapping as boats cut gently down canals.

He started the morning with a before-opening-hours tour of a squero, the oldest gondola workshop in Venice. I asked many questions of the two elderly woodworkers, Francesco and Lorenzo. They spoke only Italian, but their words were driven by such feeling for their history, their craft, that I felt I understood them before Alessandro translated. I could have stayed for days. I could have apprenticed there for years and been happy.

As we were leaving, Lorenzo asked us to wait. He went to his workbench and returned with a miniature carved forcola. It was deep blackish-brown in color and had a mirrored finish. He explained that it was ebony. A very dense wood. So dense in fact, that it would sink in water. He placed it in my hand, and before he let go, he told me how each forcola was made specifically for a gondoliere and that it had hidden powers. How there was a name for every section of it. How each section corresponded to different parts of the human body. How the gondoliere would maneuver through the twists and turns of the canals by working his oar in the different parts of the forcola.

How without this relationship, you go nowhere. How this was life as Lorenzo saw it.

Alessandro had translated all of this with a small smile on his face, eyes bouncing between the man and the carved ebony in my hand. When he was done, I moved to hand it back to him, but he shook his head. He curled my fingers around it and his hands around my fingers. Eyes wet with age, he looked solidly into mine and said, “Questa forcola è molto difficile da rompere. Come un buon cuore. Il tuo.” Then he gently squeezed my fingers and smiled a smile that had lived a very long, very joyful, very hard, very honorable life.

Alessandro was motionless. He simply stared at Lorenzo until he released me and returned to his work.

After a moment, he blinked, and turned to face me.

“He said, this forcola is very difficult to break. Like a good heart. Yours.”

* * *

We left the shop and brushed past the queue of waiting tourists. I couldn’t stop looking at the forcola.

“Remarkable.”

“It really is.”

“No, I mean, what I just saw. What I just heard. I’ve known that man my entire life and he’s never done that.”

I stopped walking. “What are you talking about? This isn’t a keepsake he makes for all your?—”

“No.” Alessandro walked back to me. “It is yours alone. His words as well. No one else’s.”

I pressed it against my chest. “I had no idea. But why me?”

“Because you are”—his eyes worked their way over my face—“you. And he chose to honor that.” He glanced down at the forcola. “Remarkable.”

I looked down at it, too. Then I stuffed it deep in my jacket pocket. Zipped it up. Looked back at Alessandro and said, like a vow, “I’ll keep it forever.”

A cell phone rang and, after a moment of staring at each other, we both realized that it was his. He quickly dug it out of his coat, glanced at the screen, and silenced it. “Sorry.”

“You can take it, I don’t mind.”

“It’s just my sister. I normally don’t have my phone, but I’m waiting on a confirmation call.”

“Answer it.”

“We have a protocol. If she immediately calls back then I know it’s an emergen?—”

It rang again. Chagrined, he gestured to an empty bench. I sat as he stepped slightly away and brought the phone to his ear. “Liv, dimmi. I’m with a… He won’t eat figs ? Hang on, is he crying ?” After a moment, Alessandro dropped his chin to his chest. He chuckled. “He threw the plate? No. No, Liv, I didn’t…” He brought two fingers to the space between his eyebrows and rubbed. “Okay, I may have said something like that, but he—put him on.” He turned to me apologetically, signaling that he would be quick. His voice pitched up. “Hey, Lucca! Lucca, my good little man, I wanna talk to you, but I can’t until you stop crying. Yeah, I know she tried to give you… Buddy, I can’t understand you when you’re crying like this, take a big breath. There ya go. Okay, now, about these figs.” Alessandro glanced up at me and rolled his eyes with a loving smile that did weird things to my stomach. “Right…yes…no, wait, I told you that wasps die in the flower to help the fig grow—what? No, no, Lucca, the fig isn’t a dead bee box .” I had to stifle my laugh. “What I meant was that the wasp gives itself to the flower so that the fig grows big and juicy and delicious. And by the time we pick it from the tree, the wasp has completely disappeared. It becomes the fig! Yes, exactly. Like the caterpillar I showed you that turns into the butterfly. I know! It is magic. More nature magic, Lucca.” He caught my eye and made a cringey, this is so cheesy, I’m so sorry face and I smiled at him the way I would have smiled at Lucca. “So pick the plate up off the floor, tell your mom you’re sorry, and enjoy those figs that the wasp made just for you. Sure, save me one. Love you, Lucca. Let me talk to your mom now.” He walked over to me as he said, in a long-suffering tone used only with siblings, “Yeah, you’re welcome, but let’s revisit the definition of emergency later, okay? Yeah, yeah, love you, too.” He hung up and tucked his phone away. “Again, sorry.”

“Are you kidding? That was the highlight of my visit so far.”

He threw his hands up charmingly. “I never know how much information is too much information at that age. At any age, actually. Anyway, shall we? Let’s grab a traghetto across the canal.”

I had so many questions. So many more things I wanted to know about him. I wanted to ask, Will your nephew follow in your footsteps? How do you feel about that? Do you want kids of your own one day? Do you want a family? How would that even work? But I was thinking like a friend.

I had to remember this wasn’t that. Which he reinforced when we settled next to each other in the small boat for the minute-long Grand Canal crossing and dropped his nose to my neck, slowly inhaled, sending shivers through me, and murmured, “That magnolia scent is irresistible on you. Did you enjoy the bath oil?”

“I did. Very much.”

“Did you touch yourself with it?” My eyes flew to the boat’s other occupants. A group of six Japanese tourists, a gay couple of indeterminate nationality, and the gondoliere, who undoubtedly spoke at least a little English. Alessandro read my mind. “They’re not paying attention.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. Did you use it on your clit?”

“Jesus!” My hand went to his knee, I think to steady myself. He covered it with his. I couldn’t answer.

“I could repeat the question. Maybe louder?—”

“Noooo. Okay, yes. For a minute. A very quick minute.”

“Good. And?”

“There was no and.” I remembered our conversation in the bedroom last night about pleasure. “It’s difficult. I guess you’d say I’m difficult.”

He left my neck and my eyes left the people, who, to be fair, did seem oblivious, and went to his face. I found him looking at my mouth. Without shifting his focus, he brought his hand to my head. To anyone else, it would appear as if he were simply, lovingly, brushing back my hair. But his thumb stroked over my temple. Whispered, “Lots of thinking going on up here, huh?”

“Constantly.”

“What about?”

“Things.”

“Anything specific?”

“Not really. Just things.”

“You should probably stop.”

“Oh, okay.”

“If you want to, that is.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Why?”

“Because you never know what might happen.”

“When?”

“In the future.”

“We can’t predict the future, Claire.”

“Is this where you remind me of no assumptions, no expectations?”

“Doesn’t seem like I have to. If you want to think about something, think about what you want.” Then he was standing and lifting me up onto the dock and leading me forward and that’s when I realized we’d arrived. “This way.”

I followed him in a daze.

He took me to the Doge’s Palace and when our docent told the tale of the original Casanova’s daring escape from the prison, Alessandro and I listened with the kind of rapt attention that only happens when you know you can’t look at the other person or you’ll start laughing.

Afterward, as it drizzled off and on, we walked around and he fed me bites of food along the way, delicacies and specialties he knew of in each crevice of the city. We ambled, and talked more about my pleasure, or lack thereof. And how my thinking about what might happen was preventing me from feeling what was happening. It was so comfortably casual. A strolling conversation between swallows of delicious food. And I talked to him like a cross between a therapist and a friend. Or a lover. I told him I felt knotted up inside. Tangled. Always had, but especially since Richard’s death.

He listened with magnetic intensity, creating an impenetrable force field around us. He likened me to a delicate chain in a jewelry box. How it starts out free of entanglement, but somehow ends up knotted. So you pull at it, to disentangle it, and the more you pull the worse it gets. So you stop pulling, stop trying so damn hard to untangle it. And then, like magic, it unravels right before your eyes.

And sometimes, he joked, a little oil helps.

He had taken all my scattered thoughts and corralled them. Then loosened them. Even freed them. I felt like I might be seeing a way forward. How we might begin to untangle me.

I wanted that. More than I’d ever wanted anything.

“Claire?”

I hadn’t realized that I had stopped walking. That I was standing there, in the middle of a passageway, lost—or should I say found?—in thought. I quickly caught up to him and he put his arm around me, to protect me from the weather. It was late afternoon and everything was closing for riposo. I half hoped that he’d suggest we go back to the palazzo, get out of these wet clothes, and… But no such luck.

He took me to an out-of-the-way museum that specialized in lesser-known Impressionist painters. He came alive here—we both did—talking nonstop about the techniques, the colors, the light, art, art, art, everything art. At our core, we were two process nerds and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had someone to enjoy this part of myself with.

When he’d paused before a Pissarro, I said, “I want to see your new paintings.”

He looked taken aback. “Mine? Oh, well. I don’t actually have anything new.”

“In Venice, you mean?”

He looked toward the exit. “Anywhere. They’re all with you. Or Sotheby’s, I suppose.” He started walking, out of the last exhibit room, and into the small lobby.

I grabbed his arm to slow him. “Wait… are you saying you haven’t painted in five years?”

He looked past me, out the window. “Let’s move on while there’s a break in the weather.”

“Alessandro.”

“No.” He steered me out the door. “Nothing I didn’t end up painting over.”

“Why?”

“I lost it, that’s all.”

“Lost what?”

“The drive, the passion, the connection. It . Are you cold?”

I wasn’t. I was the opposite at the moment. “I don’t understand. How do you just lose that?”

He put his hands in his pockets. “It happens.”

“It happens? That’s what a kid says when they flunk their math test. What could possibly?—”

“Maybe your husband had something to do with it.”

I stopped walking.

He slowed. And turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “That came out wrong.”

“No, it didn’t.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “You’re right.” I looked down at my feet. “I don’t know why he reneged on your deal. But he did. And I’m sorry.”

He groaned slightly. “ Don’t apologize. Forget it, please. I’m sorry I brought it up again.”

But I wasn’t done. “He changed when he got sick. Was forced to confront his mortality, you know? He did some bad things. As if he could outrun death. He became reckless and desperate and selfish.”

“Right,” he said, tentatively. “But this happened before that.” He extended his hand to me. “Never mind, seriously.”

“Did you…” I’d wanted to know this for five years and now that I was about to ask it, I resisted knowing. “Tell him about what happened between us that night?”

His hand dropped. He looked at me. “No. Why would I? Nothing happened.”

I hugged myself tighter. “Right. Of course.”

He looked like there was more he wanted to say. But he stepped closer and pulled me into him again, his arm around my shoulder. I let my hand reach up and rest on his wrist.

The rain increased, as did our pace, to the point where we couldn’t have talked even if we’d wanted to.

We came to a dead end, the path simply dropping off into a canal. But right before we reached the end, Alessandro went left, ducking under a timber that cut across a narrow passageway. His hand came back through and beckoned. I took it and, fingers interlaced, he pulled me through.

I stood to full height and realized it wasn’t a passageway. It didn’t lead anywhere. It was just an enclosed space, no bigger than a hall closet. My back was pressed against one wall and he seemed to hover against the other.

We looked at each other, breathing hard, dripping wet. There was a smile, but there was also a moment of awe: we were here, together, and how had that happened? Either one of us could have said something. I could have made a joke about him only taking me to the finest places; he could have commented on how I looked good, all flushed and damp.

But instead, he put his hand on the wall next to my head and leaned forward. His steamy breath bathed my face. He dropped his lips to mine, mouth open. As he lingered there, he stepped fully against me, his chest pressed to mine. Together, they lifted and lowered in harmony, our breaths mingling. But then he closed his lips and brushed them over mine like a feather. At the needy sound that came from my throat, he deepened the pressure, slowly devouring my mouth with his.

We lost minutes like this, finally, finally kissing. I was so consumed with the feel of him, the taste of him, the heat of him, that I didn’t notice the sound of the rain had disappeared until he pulled back, only his mouth, and only far enough to speak. “Let the untangling begin.”

“Gentlemen, start your engines.” I pushed against him. “Is that a starter pistol in your pocket or are you?—”

On a groan, he took my mouth again. My hands went to his hair, his to my hips. After another minute, his lips paused at my temple as we both breathed. “Thinking about anything?”

I shook my head. Then a breathy laugh escaped me. “Well. Other than how to get you painting again.”

“Claire…” He sounded regretful that he’d told me. That this wasn’t supposed to be about him.

So I tried to joke. “You see, it’s like you’re a delicate chain, tangled up in a jewelry box.”

He laughed. Then backed away, leaning against the opposite wall. His hands lifted lazily at his sides. “Does the world need another painter?”

I came off my wall and grabbed his shoulders. He needed to see how serious I was when I said this: “I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have your art in it.”

“This is getting uncomfortably close to our conversation at your rehearsal dinner.” His eyes went soft. “When nothing happened.”

I got lost in those eyes for a time.

Finally, he leaned in again, and his phone rang.

It had better not be another fruit emergency.

He glanced at the screen. “This is the call I was waiting for.” He answered and spoke briefly in Italian. When he hung up, he looked at me. “So. Fancy going to an orgy tonight?”

“Seriously?”

“It’s the last weekend of Carnival so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to book the costumer on such short notice, but we’re all set. It’s happening.”

He must have seen the momentary flicker across my face, the second-guessing happening between what I thought I wanted and who I knew myself to actually be. “Amazing! Thank you so much.”

His smile softened and he reached for my hand. “We’ll go and you’ll scope it out. Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you’ll want to leave immediately. Remember, Claire: We only do what you want.”

I wanted one more kiss. I pulled him to me and smoothed my hands over his shoulders. My fingers were drawn to the wool of his coat, the cashmere of his sweater as I kissed him with easy, comfortable pleasure. My mouth released him just to say, “I want a massage before the ball.”

His eyes flashed. His hands went to the back of my neck and pressed into the knots. “Then let’s go home.”

Home.